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Michael Casey shows how he raised his new house 10 feet off the ground with a concrete garage base, as fellow Shickshinny flood victim Clarence Lewis looks on Thursday. Two years after the Sept. 8-9 2011 Tropical Storm Lee flooding, many hard-hit residents have applied for funding to buy out their homes for demolition. A few, like Casey, are raising their houses above the flood zone.

SHICKSHINNY - Michael Casey paused in working on the concrete lower section of his Main Street home to remember a fateful day in the borough: Sept. 7, 2011.

"It was pouring here, and I remember someone coming up the street, saying 'don't panic, it's only going to go up to 38 feet,'" he recalled. "The rest is history."

In the aftermath of the Tropical Storm Lee flood of Sept. 8-9, 2011, when the Susquehanna River rose to an unprecedented 42.66 feet, devastating riverside communities, many flood-weary residents sought buyouts of their properties, opting to move out and let the municipality take over their land. A few, like Casey, raised their houses out of the flood zone.

Proponents of buyouts say they prevent having to start over after each flood, and saves the government untold amounts of money for damages.

But critics say buyouts can erode a municipality's tax base, leaving behind vacant lots the borough or township has to maintain.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency offers hazard mitigation grants, administered by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency - which contributes 25 percent - to residents subject to repeat flooding. They must use the money either to have their houses demolished or raised.

Plymouth Township Supervisor Chairwoman Gale Conrad said more than 60 homeowners have received or are awaiting buyouts.

Last Tuesday, the supervisors passed a motion to put out bids for a demolition crew to take down six of the homes, whose owners have completed the process of turning the properties over to the township.

One of the six is the East Poplar Street home of Susan Lore and her husband, Charles. They are moving across the river to Nanticoke.

It hurts Lore to think her home will be demolished, that nobody will ever again occupy the house her husband's family lived in since 1967, and that their own family lived in for 15 years.

"But it's either that or stay there and wait for the next (flood)," Lore said.

During the Tropical Storm Lee flood, the Lores chose not to evacuate, waiting it out in the second floor of the house, unable to believe the water would get that high.

But it did. They got 5 feet of it in the first floor of the house.

"It was something I would never want to go through again," Lore said.

The flood mud stunk and it took a long time to get cleaned up. In the process someone broke in and stole items with sentimental value. The Lores turned the second floor of their house into an apartment until they figured out what to do.

Raising the big house wasn't practical, and, after the ordeal of cleanup, the Lores thought it best to take the buyout and get out of the flood zone. Insurance was also a factor: Lore said they paid $1,800 a year for flood insurance. She can't imagine what it would be now.

"It was a long process. Very stressful is what it was," Lore said of the buyout, which involved a lot of paperwork. "This is your home. It wasn't fun saying, 'here it is, take it.'"

Buyouts are based on the appraised value of the property. Lore said some people couldn't afford to take the money, but she and her husband were fortunate: They didn't owe a lot on their mortgage, so they could pay it off.

"You don't like what they're giving you for your property, but you take it," she said. "You don't get rich from it, but you get by."

To raze or to raise?

Not everyone who applied for a buyout through FEMA got one. That's where the Luzerne County Office of Community Development stepped in.

Andrew D. Reilly, Luzerne County Office of Community Development executive director, said the county is in the process of awarding disaster recovery funding. Through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Luzerne County OCD has about $11.9 million for the buyout program, and about a dozen municipalities are participating, Reilly said.

Like with FEMA grants, the money is used to buy out properties that are routinely flooded. Under federal guidelines, once the structures are demolished, the properties must remain undeveloped.

"You can't just continue to rebuild in these areas with this situation," Reilly noted.

That's why the Department of Housing and Urban Development encourages buyouts, he said.

But Judy Aita, president of the post-flood community betterment group West Pittston Tomorrow, opposes them. She said they mean "lots that will be vacant forever," plus dwindling revenue for the borough and Wyoming Area School District.

"West Pittston is in a difficult spot because the buyouts not only affect towns such as ours that are small and have a small tax base, but in West Pittston they are, in most cases, not contiguous," Aita said via email. "That makes for scattered parcels that are difficult and costly to maintain and police. The buyout land can never return to the tax rolls, cannot be used for any commercial endeavor, and cannot have any permanent enclosed structures."

In Shickshinny, an estimated 212 households were affected by the flood, approximately 75 substantially. The borough lost about 30 homes to buyouts, according to zoning and code enforcement officer Rick Harmon.

The problem, Councilman Barry Noss said, is that most of the people who took buyouts are moving out of Shickshinny altogether.

"They want to come back, but there's no room for them," he said. "We're losing taxes like crazy."

In addition, the borough has to maintain the land: mow the grass in summer, shovel snow in winter, Noss said.

On the other hand, Plymouth Township has land outside the flood zone, and so far more than 16 new houses have been built, Conrad said. Because the houses being demolished were older and repeatedly damaged by floods, assessment on a new house equals about four flood-prone homes, she said.

"We are grateful for that: we have the higher areas, which balances out the taxes," Conrad said.

Casey is one Shickshinny resident the borough isn't losing.

During the flood, he got almost 8 feet of water in his house, up to the second floor. He lost all the house's contents and his tools. Flood insurance didn't cover everything, "but it helped."

Instead of taking a buyout, Casey opted to tear down his house and put up a modular home atop a 10-foot-high concrete base that includes a garage. He knows it's not a question of whether there's going to be another flood, but when.

So why did he want to stay?

"I love Shickshinny. It's a nice little town," Casey said.

eskrapits@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2072

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